"He had an elasticity of mind,"
says M. Scherer, speaking of him as he knew him in youth, "which reacted
against vexations from without, and his cheerfulness was readily
restored by conversation and the society of a few kindred spirits. We
were accustomed, two or three friends and I, to walk every Thursday to
the Saleve, Lamartine's _Saleve aux flancs azures_; we dined there, and
did not return till nightfall." They were days devoted to _debauches
platoniciennes_, to "the free exchange of ideas, the free play of fancy
and of gayety. Amiel was not one of the original members of these
Thursday parties; but whenever he joined us we regarded it as a
fete-day. In serious discussion he was a master of the unexpected, and
his energy, his _entrain_, affected us all. If his grammatical
questions, his discussions of rhymes and synonyms, astonished us at
times, how often, on the other hand, did he not give us cause to admire
the variety of his knowledge, the precision of his ideas, the charm of
his quick intelligence! We found him always, besides, kindly and
amiable, a nature one might trust and lean upon with perfect security.
He awakened in us but one regret; _we could not understand how it was a
man so richly gifted produced nothing, or only trivialities_."
In these last words of M.
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